Annual Report 2016-2017

In 2017, the ACLU of Southern California – backed by a record number of donors, thousands of volunteers and the pro bono support of law firms large and small – scored ground-breaking civil liberty victories.

Perhaps at no time in the 95-year history of the ACLU SoCal has the organization been so intensely active as agents of change and protectors of our constitutional rights. Court actions taken in the last year ranged from those in local venues on up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court. Our advocacy work took us from hosting grassroots phone banks to lobbying in city halls and Congress.

We could have never done it alone. Our mission is tremendously enriched by working with committed, cause-driven community organizations as coalition partners.

As proud as we are of our work, there’s no way to disguise the fact that we live at a difficult time when justice, whether political or economic, is endangered. We face it with an ever-fervent commitment to our mission – to free speech, immigrants’ rights, racial justice, reproductive justice, gender equity, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice, jails reform, education equity, fair treatment of people who are homeless, police practices reform and health care as a right.